


That Which Others Overlook

by badluckvixen13 (alteringviews)



Series: The Brightest Witch Of Her Age [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Hermione Granger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 15:41:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10744686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alteringviews/pseuds/badluckvixen13
Summary: It's strange that it doesn't feel like a victory.Stranger still that she still has so many questions.





	That Which Others Overlook

It’s funny.  

This was the moment they’d fought for, killed and nearly died for, yet it wasn’t quite right. The dust settled like a mist of time and ash around them all--catching in the lungs of the still living and settling over the bodies of the dead--pureblood and mudblood alike.  She saw Harry standing and Voldemort dead, yet she did not see a Hero, a Triwizard champion...She did not even see an accomplished wizard. 

She saw a boy. 

A boy who’d decided to do too much because he didn’t have enough, or maybe because he just did what was expected of him. Perhaps he’d had a death wish--she’d never quite managed to speak with Harry about it, but she bet it was some combination of the three with a dash of manipulation on Dumbledore’s part.  When they cheered and people rushed forward to hug him, she stood back and watched them all, listening to the turn of time, all the events leading up to this moment. It’s like listening to the Time Turner’s spinning back the clock for her, bending reality. 

Maybe it started before Salazar Slytherin’s distrust and prejudice against muggle-borns, the original four who could not agree, and the secret within the school. Perhaps it started when one man lifted a stick wrapped in animal entrails to start a fire and the other struck two rocks together. The same affect, different methods. 

Perhaps this entire battle was merely inherited along with their blood, wizard and muggle alike. An argument that strove towards a conclusion--all these years started from the moment that wizards and muggles had acknowledged each other as similar but not the same… the time when wizards allowed themselves to fade into myth and watched the muggles live in fear and ignorance of their existence, controlled from the shadows.

Dumbledore’s sister, his father wasting away in Azkaban for defending his little girl against boys who knew nothing...because their parents knew nothing and their parents before them. Because the Wizarding World had cast off its ties with Muggles… It had made them Other, lower, lesser and undeserving of knowledge… Such prejudice had led to the death of three of them and hundreds more like them. It had been the reason for the death of Albus’s sister at the hands of three wizards who had known only what history had shown them and had never cared to learn more. 

It was the reason that Severus had become the Half-Blood Prince, taking a self-loathing title, transforming it, embodying it for the sake of a woman who stood so far from him yet far closer to him than Albus or James had… 

Hermione looked at Harry as he stood silent and staring into the distance, the weight of his entire life, the prophecy of the Boy Who Lived now laid to rest it seemed. 

It’s funny how it doesn’t seem like the end. 

*

Had Lily ever wondered, ever questioned, why she’d married James in the end and not Severus, or anyone else for that matter? The man she’d known all of her life, who’d lived and died for her lost in the dark because he’d been a boy too ingesting, choking, and dying by the same prejudice that had birthed his self-appointed title. The badge of his self-loathing and hatred for people who sneered. 

And James… who’d lived the life that Death Eaters said he should, never knowing suffering or strife. She wondered how on Earth Lily could not sympathize with Severus. How on Earth she had not seen that it had not been her he’d yelled at, but himself in the end. 

He was a mudblood, just like her in the eyes of purebloods...Confused, hurting and so very…

Human.

_ Mudblood _ , Hermione reminded herself. He’d called her Mudblood and planned to join the Death Eaters while in Hogwarts on a crusade to purge the wizarding world of people like them for a man who only believed in power, immortality and his own self-hatred. He’d had a death wish even then… a deep seated hatred for the wizarding world that needed him and hated him all the same. 

_ Let them all die _ , she remembered him thinking. Let them all die rather than another person have to suffer through the wizarding world's personal brand of cruelty: a false place to belong.

Had Lily not asked him once… why? Had he’d been so entranced with the prospect of revenge and a place to belong in this new world, no longer straddling the divide as one who was both wizard and not? Perhaps Lily too, though Gryffindor, had been a coward. A coward, too afraid to try and reach across the divide… a coward afraid to face her own status in the wizarding world as Severus had inadvertently faced his. Too afraid to seek truth. Perhaps, she couldn’t face the fact that James had been merely fascinated by her and the fact that she had no interest in the pureblood politic. Had only stopped his cruelty at her behest while Severus had found a way out. 

Perhaps it had never crossed her mind as with marrying James came a place to belong in the wizarding world. A place that shouldn’t have had to have been earned through marital ties, but would be. Perhaps she thought marrying had been her own way of changing the wizarding world’s way, like a child sticking out her tongue at a bully saying  _ you have to accept me now. _

Perhaps she had truly loved James...who knew?

It had been the very same love that had saved Harry in the end. Love that had made Severus protect Harry even at the threat of his own life. Perhaps a love strongre the She wondered again why Tom Riddle had never realized that he was feeding into the hatred of half-bloods, the prejudice and doing himself a disservice…

Or maybe, not a disservice but instead revealing the truth, bringing it to the surface where other buried it beneath rhetoric and golden statues. There was… a sickness in the Wizarding World that had pervaded every inch of it self-destructive and pervasive. A disease and parasite that kept the traditions of before, traditions that no one fully understood any longer, traditions unchanged by time, alive and wrapped around the throats of the living. 

Had Tom felt so choked, so bound, so  _ crushed _ by those bindings that he’d been driven mad? Seeking to destroy not just his muggle heritage, but his humanity along with it and transcend the politics, the lies, and layers of  half-truths into what magic could be? 

Horcruxes and dark magic fueled by rage, fueled by the abuse suffered by purebloods and those that followed them. The hands of a hierarchy that would in the end, end them all? Every twist and turn of fate that had been their lives, started long before any of them had been alive. Albus’s plot… Severus’s love… so many things...so many little pieces fitting together, all the edges toward the middle, to this moment.

After reading through most of the Hogwarts Library, she’d always wondered the  _ why _ of it all. Why separate from muggles? Why live in the Middle Ages for centuries after, while the Muggle world moved on? Why establish this hierarchy— the archaic out ranking the industrialized efficiency of the Muggle world—only to result in this twisted self-fulfilling prophecy from the lips of Salazar Slytherin and all the like-minded people whose names had been lost to the mists of time. 

A pure-blooded wizard overpowering a halfblood. A mudblood endangering all of wizard kind...because of the complex he'd inherited from his bloodline. 

It’s a wry dark laugh she felt coming out of her chest as she found herself kneeling on the ground, gripping her still bleeding arm and breathing. She wondered if Voldemort, in all his infinite hated had ever stopped to consider that Salazar Slytherin, his house’s namesake, his forebearer, would have rather let him suffer through the uncertainty that came with the manifestation of his magic, let Muggles and whoever shame him, perhaps take him in to be studied--a lab rat for the rest of his life barring some wizarding intervention than have him in his house… She wondered often if Harry had ever considered joining Slytherin, or regretted choosing Gryffindor.

While everyone celebrated with their own sighs of relief, looking for one another in the debris , she sat down on a pile of rubble with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, her ever running brain tracing the question back through history: was there a difference between Muggle-borns, half-bloods, and pure bloods? Some innate hierarchy? She knew of the division between muggles and wizards and as a muggle-born straddled that clear line of division. 

Pure bloods.

Mudbloods.

Muggles. 

Eventually, someone came to her, trying to wrap her wound. She told them to find her bag and pull out a bottle that said “Nagini”. It had been a fifth year, one she remembered tutoring and mentoring for months before she'd left Hogwarts. He'd done as she asked, grabbing her bag and summoning the bottle to his hand, giving it to her to drink and watched in awe she cast the healing charm over the wound, healing it seamlessly and ended the blood replenishing charm.

“Thank you, Derek.”

“Is it really over?”

She pat him on the shoulder and told him that Voldemort was dead. She found Harry first, then Ron, careful wrap them both in hugs, to get them all warmth to drink and into the wreckage of the hall to see everyone who'd survived before walking out onto the bridge.

“You won the Elder Wand?” Ron asked staring at it in Harry’s hand. “You could be… invincible.”

She said nothing but watched Harry’s face, waiting for a reply. He merely took out his own broken wand and whispered the repairing spell over it, shoving the newly mended wand in his pocket before st as ring at it.

_ Please Harry… Please… _

He held it in both hands and decisively snapped it in half, the thestral hair trailed and floated away before Harry tossed both pieces over the edge. She watched them fly away and crash to the bottom of the gorge with a sigh of relief as Ron stared incredulously. Harry walked away from the edge, back towards the castle-- done with at least this ancient issue.

They hadn't died in vain. None of them and that had lightened and mended something in her heart of hearts. She turned to take Harry’s arm and walk back with him. Ron still staring after the broken pieces.

“I'm proud of you, Harry,” Hermione said, leaning her head on his shoulder with relief. 

She’d been terrified really, that all of the scars of the war had truly changed Harry. For if Voldemort had been horrible, Harry could have been down right  _ demonic  _ given the right nudge in the wrong direction.

“Hermione,” Harry started. “In Snape’s memories… he mentioned you.”

“Oh?” Hermione asked softly.

Harry nodded, “I don't think we should talk about it now… but eventually? I...I'd like the truth..and a chance to thank you properly.”

Hermione smiled at him, stopping to hug him properly and kiss his cheek.

“One day,” she promised and looked back to where Ron was trailing behind them.

“Oi,” she called. “Dragging your feet aren't you?”

Ron said nothing but caught up them, taking Hermione’s arm around his shoulder and walked with them back into Hogwarts for some much needed rest.

*

The End of the War party was held a few weeks later, an invitation of anyone who could make it to come, an invitation to all their allies. Hermione was still trying to get her feet under her, though Harry and Ron seemed to have bounced back rather quickly. Harry, who'd mourned enough, had his arm wrapped around Ginny’s waist, chatting with Luna and Neville. Ron, who'd maybe managed to grow up a little, stood by the punch bowl, casting her looks across the room that she couldn't return looking into her cup of punch still wearing her clothes from the battle, covered in blood.

“Hello!”

She looked up at the dark figures that had entered the party. Petya, Aleksandr, Antonio, and one other whom she assumed to be the illustrious Cyrus… Dark hair and features that reminded her of the Middle East with eyes that were near glowing in the golden-hazel color. Petya had gotten an extra scar on his cheek, Antonio, one to his neck and his hand wrapped in bandages, Aleksandr was leaning on a crutch. Their hair had grown out, much like Viktor’s had. They had grown up.

And then there was Viktor, his arm in a sling, his body wrapped and smiling as he looked around the Great Hall. He was… just as handsome as he had been a year ago, maybe even more so now with the darkness cleared from his eyes. A gorgeous woman at his side chatting with him with strong grecian features, she wasn't one of Antonio's sisters, but seeing them together made her smile and her stomach twist. 

They looked good together.

_ Pureblood… _

She looked down to her own hands around the cup, covered in grime and sticky with blood. She probably looked a mess, her hair frizzier than normal from being tossed around for so long.

_ Mudblood.  _

“‘Mione!” She turned looking at Ron. That same dopey smile, almost vacant eyes looking at her, offering her a hand. “Come dance with me.”

_ Pureblood _ , she thought and looked at her own hand.  _ Mudblood. _

Quidditch: Books. Wizard:...

_ Witch? Not-Witch? _

Why did this thoughts come now? At the worst time, she should be celebrating the end of years of struggle! Not…

Not…

Realizing that nothing had really changed.

“‘Mione?” Ron asked as she looked up at him, pulled from her thoughts that seemed to be spiraling out of control down a dark path she never had time to tread before.

The question wouldn’t be put off now it seemed even as she looked at Ron. His eyes were as dull as ever, almost vacant and arrogant, squirming in the illusion it offered him. She thinks of the Yule Ball…

_ Next time there’s a dance-- _

Her stomach churned and she took his hand and watched herself let him try to guide her around the dancefloor. The lights of Great Hall filled with candles, the unknowable forces of magic that no book could truly uncover. So very different from the electricity, steel, and coal of the Muggle world.  The wizarding world was shrouded in mystery and mysticism where the origin of the things, who made them, by what means, was all lost with the flick of a wand--

_ Archaic, _ is the word she finds as Ron leads her outside to talk.  _ Never changing, stagnant, stationary… _

_ Dead, _ she thought swallowing, taking a seat as he paced. 

_ Dead _ , a voice in her head repeated.  _ And dying. _

_ Pureblood…  _

_ Mudblood... _

The number of pureblood families were dwindling, the age of halflings, mudbloods and half bloods was coming faster than anyone in the wizarding world wanted to acknowledge. Yet somehow no one realized that Voldemort hadn't ever really been the problem. He'd just been the product of a much larger, more deeply rooted issue, the origin of which stretching back beyond the Fountain of Magical Brethren, beyond Hogwarts...

Yet even knowing this, the words did not fit in her mind.They were all very much alive after all and changing now that the threat of Tom Riddle was gone forever. Ron was… 

Knowable, known… safer as her father had put it... 

_ Inevitable _ is what he'd meant as theirs was a story played over and over again throughout time. She'd never been faced with the concept of inevitable before. There was nothing inevitable except death and staying black. That term had powers that Ron could never even fathom. He stopped whirling around and tugged her along, she was sure once he'd caught a glimpse of the Durmstrang graduates coming in.

They made it outside and she took a seat on some rubble to watch Ron pace, trying to get words out that wouldn’t come, jumbled up in tradition and magic on his pureblood tongue. 

_ His blood traitor tongue _ , she heard Bellatrix hiss in the dark of her mind. A place she didn’t like to go or acknowledge, but now that it was over, she had nothing but... _ time _ to acknowledge and make sense of it. These problems of the past that are never laid to rest because the past was still very much the present. 

She’d grown up her whole life with her muggle parents, in her muggle schools, up until Hogwarts. The muggle world was a place of looking forward for the most part, not completely bound in its inheritances, a place of certainty and movement--modernity. Or rather, post-industrialization. The humming of electricity in the wires like veins running through the house, the feeling of the air conditioner running in a car, the sound of gravel crunching beneath tires. It was a world of knowing and new discovery where the Wizarding World--

“Perhaps ‘Mione we should--”

Unknowable lines--

“I mean we’ve been dancing around it for years.”

_ Handed down for centuries,-- _

“Now that everything’s over, maybe--”

With no time to mourn because it was all still  _ now _ and then and never all swirling together in this mystic bubble of the universe. Yet even the wizarding world was a type of post-industrial… mass produced brooms and potions, papers. People and magic taking the place of gears, coal, and electricity… Wood and stone in place of steel...In the Muggle world, time moved forward, but the wizarding world had no true sense of time at all. They had history, yes, but not time as the slow-moving, blink of an eye thing that led all into death. Time was just another thing to manipulate… the only thing that seemed inevitable was death or corruption.

Harry had become a Master of Death by being willing to sacrifice himself and possessing  the three hollows...she found it strange that the wizarding world, in all their knowledge, had considered that a mastery. Human resignation to death as the ultimate force when there were so many worse things in life to suffer…

It seemed a joke to her. The most powerful wand in the world that did not defend its master  was nothing more than a tool that favored power. The resurrection stone that could only conjure spirits from beyond the veil, not bodies, not ghosts, but memories of consciousness… It resurrected nothing, but did interject the past into the present as the wizarding world was so happy to do… Then there was the invisibility cloak, making one like death:unseen but present…

What a joke, she thought. Powerful objects yes, but hardly worthy of the title  _ Master of Death. _ Submission to something and understanding death was something different.

Wizards could pull people back from the brink of death, wash away the signs of time as if they were nothing...as if time itself had ceased to exist.  How could anything move forward without a ticking clock? With this infinite amount of time,  this strange concept of labor and seemingly inexhaustible resources that defied the very  _ rules _ of the universe…How could people who could chose to persist on as ghosts ever understand  _ death _ ?

Why would anyone move away from the traditions when they'd had no reason to? So now, here she was. Post-war, post-family, post- _ time _ in some ways… 

Listening to Ron, botch something that could have been so very simple and was perhaps overdue. 

_ You have to give him a chance,  _ her father said.  _ He'll come around. _

Fine, she thought. Post the wizarding apocalypse of sorts, she supposed everyone deserved a chance.

“Ron,” she said interrupting him and looking up to the way he flushed. “How about dinner tomorrow night?”

He blinked and grinned nodding, “Sounds good.”

She stood then, taking his hand to lead him back into the hall, back to the ever-swirling lights of ages past. Lights that seemed to have always been and always would be--frozen in time beneath a magic ceiling and grand arches. In this stationary, world on the edge of both, a demi-monde of both, straining to keep her feet on both sides. 

To at once move forward and stand still, to know and not to know. 

_ That is the question, _ she thought wryly. Or, and, either or both… Could there be both? She looked up, staring blankly across the room to where the Durmstrang graduates had taken residence to see Viktor twirling the woman he'd come in with as best he could with one arm. His eyes alight and speaking to her in Bulgarian. Their eyes met for a moment and she smiled at him hopelessly.

Rather than whether she should be dancing with Ron, or Viktor Krum, should be Gryffindor or Ravenclaw… perhaps the question should be now: science or mysticism? For surely, the two could not coincide hand in hand  _ quasimodo _ incarnate, embellished with bushy hair, brown skin and magically shrunk teeth.

Viktor’s dance partner looked at her and offered her a smile as well before speaking to Viktor, drawing his attention and pulling him off the dancefloor.

She let Ron pull her close, rocking to the sound of music in the hall, the closest he could get to dancing and she finds that the scent of Ron isn’t freshly mowed grass and new parchment, not spearmint toothpaste, nor bourdon and the sea either--but salt and trembling, a nervous twitch and stutter.

He’s just Ronald Weasley still. Not a hero, not a martyr, not anything but a boy who’d followed his best friend into battle that he didn’t fully understand. A boy who’d followed his best friend into battle for fame, glory, and maybe that promise made what felt like years ago. 

He was still a boy...

She can hear the years now, in the lilting music, the beating of a heart to fast to be quiet, too loud to be calm. It’s hers she realized. Her heart beating at the bottom of the darkest pit as her mind shuffled her feet around with Ron’s until they both retired to bed. 

That night, she lay awake at the Burrow letting the thoughts return to her. 

Would she be like Lily Potter in the end? And Ron her James? She shook her head, her stomach churning. She had no Severus and she wasn’t truly sure if she wanted one either… to bear the weight of such a love was something she was sure she would fail at.

_ Dark magic... _ she thought. Not necessarily evil, just called that because Wizards and Muggles had the same connotations. Light was good. Dark was bad. There was really no such thing as gray in either world. 

How could there be? They were human and in her experience humans, muggle or wizarding, didn’t do well with grey. 

_ Mudblood, half bloods… _ she shuddered, the grey that would keep the wizarding world alive, but was so deeply hated that no one acknowledged it as such. 

She sat up, her mouth suddenly dry, her heart racing. 

The thing of it. The truth of it all… The tiny little seed that had grown over the ages into this massive twisted pit like Devil’s Snare in the dark. It made her sick and she shook her head. She needed grounding, somewhere, somewhere…

_ Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts, teach us something please... _

She found herself packing up her things and running to apparate into Hogsmeade, rushing towards the castle. Through the halls and up the stairs with the rushing of students all the way to the secret alcove where the Headmaster’s office was. She spoke the words and watched the door open. 

Headmaster Mcgonagall looked up, “Miss Granger?”

“I’d like to pick up my studies,” she said standing across the table from the woman.

The older woman pursed her lips for a moment looking across the table. Hermione was no longer the young girl who would raise her hand to answer every question, no longer the girl who’d lied about taking on the troll in the bathroom either...She wasn’t entirely sure what she was beyond very serious about finishing her years at Hogwarts, clearly out of sorts and bright with whatever had drawn her here so very early in the day. It made h

“May I ask why, Miss Granger?”

Hermione took another breath and met her eyes. The fact that Ron and Harry had been accepted in the Aurors program easily lying between them, the fact that Hermione had experienced too much perhaps, to ever be okay in a classroom again. School was learning, for children really and Hermione had long since stopped being a child. 

“Because it’s over.” Hermione said. “And I need… normalcy.”

The Headmaster nodded and leaned forward to draw up the paperwork, wishing her luck and watching her stride out of her office. She walked down the hall and down the familiar path towards the Great Hall. The sound of students from all grade levels filling her ears at a distance. She shifted her bag on her shoulder, glancing across the tables. Transfiguring her robes to match theirs and looking over her schedule. She would finish the few weeks left of this semester, sit for her exams like she was supposed to and for a little while  _ pretend _ that all those nights reading those books in the forest hadn’t been for anxiety, or because she needed the knowledge to keep Harry alive, but because she knew she’d return here one day.

She would move forward and stay still. 

They were all so very lively, so very young and happy. The terror of the Battle of Hogwarts now gone, vanished into thin air it seemed with the promise of the dining feast ahead. She closed her head tightly.

“‘Mione!”

She turned to see Harry and Ron standing in the doorway. They were wearing their wizarding robes, probably just out of the induction into the Aurors.

“Why are you doing this?”

Hermione smirked, “At some point boys, we have to follow the rules.”

They laughed and hugged her, Ron bestowing a kiss on her cheek. They’d check on her whenever they could, see her in the village on trips maybe, for the holidays they hoped.

“We’ll write of course.”

“Of course,” she said. “I hope your handwriting has gotten better.”

Ron flushed and they both winced, it wasn’t the case she knew it.  They gave her a scroll of parchment , sealed with the Minster’s seal and she winced.

“Probably want you to come work with us to help clean things up.”

She shrugged, took the parchment and turned back to the Great Hall.  Both Head Girl and Boy had made it a point to introduce themselves to her, to shake her hand and smile. The new barrage of professors nodded at her as she entered their classrooms. Students nodded, pointed, whispered and all sorts of things as she walked through the halls. The only member of the Golden Trio returned to Hogwarts. 

Some wondered if it was because she was a mudblood, some wondered if it was just because she wanted to, yet those questions didn’t bother her as she stayed up late to write her papers weeks in advance and to pen letters. She paid no attention to the shadow creeping through her mind some days, concentrating on her N.E.W.T.s and graduating the way she should have if not for the mess of Voldemort and averting the end of the world. 

She’d finished at the top of the scoring pool for her N.E.W.T.s and what was left of the term, getting all Os.  As she held her diploma in her hand, all of her marks, references, and such, in the Burrow after an incredibly loud celebration with the Weasleys, Harry and the survivors of the war, she breathed a sigh of relief and set them aside, scratching it off her list of things to accomplish in life. Perhaps if she’d read beyond that line, she would have realized that she was out of anything that required any real thought or planning. 

She went to the Ministry of Magic with her scroll at which point they took her to the Wizengamot. The man who had taken up the position of interim Minister of Magic told her that Ron and Harry had already been interviewed about the events leading up to the Battle of Hogwarts. 

“As you are an accomplished Occlumens, Miss Granger, we won't bother with a Veritaserum, we only ask that you answer our questions honestly.”

He pulled out a long letter and began to read, each word like a peeling open wrapping paper to the secrets she'd carried all these years. Official apprentice of Severus Snape for Occlumency, Legilimency, Potions, Dueling, a Member of the Order of the Phoenix, official apprentice of McGonagall for transfiguration and animagus training--

“Have you achieved a full transformation?”

“No.”

He went on recollecting her apprenticeship under Flitwick for charm work and Madame Pomfrey for Healing work certifying the knowledge of a first class Healer for her knowledge of potions and spellwork. The ward work she'd done to protect them while in the forest and protect the Muggle half of London, the torture she'd endured, fooling a goblin of Gringotts, taking part of several covert operations to protect Harry. The erasing of her parent’s memories, the burial of her grandmother...

“Is there anything else?”

Hermione swallowed, “I… killed a lot of people.”

“Death Eaters?”

She nodded.

The interim Minister nodded, “So many secrets for a young girl to carry… so much knowledge. What possessed you to take this all on?”

“My friends,” she said honestly. “ I… trusted Professor Dumbledore...all of my Professors. I wanted to do what was right...what was logical.”

The man nodded and told her that the letter he'd been reading from had been written by Dumbledore before his death, attached were letters from each of her professors detailing the apprenticeships she'd undertaken in place of her normal coursework. 

“It is written primarily as a recommendation  to award you Merlin Order of the first Class.” She said nothing, the title meaning nearly nothing to her now, but an attendant came towards her to give her the medal, gold with a green ribbon. Pinning it to her plain t-shirt and letting someone take a picture of her standing beside the interim minister before they went on to ask her about her plans now that she was out of school. As she could predict, they wanted her as an Auror. She told them she'd consider it but that she had other things to wrap up before making any such decisions.

She left the Ministry with the medal in the velvet display case, the magical certificate and no words. Once outside, she apparated to her parent’s old house, empty with them in Australia, ready for sale save the things she had stored there… She went to her closet and pulled everything out, her old things, her grandmother's trunk with it. Her eyes burning, until a  tap sounded on her window. 

_ Tap tap. _

She turned towards the window, the flutter of wings and raced to it, opening it to see Ivan carrying a metal tube with runes engraved in it and a letter. She felt her lips lift in a smile as the owl hooted at her gently. They had seen one another at the celebration but had not spoken, only looking across the room at one another. Perhaps understanding that there would be a time to talk, but then was not it.

_ Dear Hermione,  _

_ Pozdravleniya, mila! I know how much it must have concerned you to not have finished school. You take top spot, no? I wished to be there for celebration, but it is possible that I will be in World Cup Finals this year. Training for it is harder than normal--or perhaps fighting for life has made me soft. Funny thought, yes? _

_ A secret, moyat maluk knizhen plukh, while I am hoping to win this year, it is not well known that I will be Seeker for Bulgaria. A surprise to prove I am still alive and… an “artist” on broom as your Ron says. Team press manager is very excited for the reveal, though I wonder if she is a bit too excited to have me on a broom again.  _

_ Lipsvash mi, Hermione. We should see each other soon. _

_ Yours,  _

_ Viktor _

_ P.S. Open the tube. _

Hermione contemplated the letter for a moment before grinning and opening the tube, letting Ivan fly in and settle in the kitchen before setting out food for him. It was always a treat when Viktor sent something from wherever he went, from his hometown...They weren’t ever flashy gifts, but meaningful things he’d picked up on the way, books he’d read and thought she would like. His letters had been the highlights of her fifth and sixth year at Hogwarts.

She’d sent him much of the same, thoughtful things that had really made her think. Ron and Harry were both very simple: food, chess, brooms… Quidditch.

She opened the tube and watch it grow into a chest. A rush of excitement in her as she began to riffle through it. Books… some in French, some in Latin, old texts, newer texts on magical theory on blending electricity with magic, of moving forward while staying still. Attached to the lid was a package. 

A bouquet of flowers, simple mindful things, and a set of passes, ten in all. The letter attached was wry. 

_ I did not think you’d see it with all the things in trunk. Come watch me play… perhaps with you in the stands, perhaps with true friends as well, I will lead my team to victory. _

She sighed at that, closing the lid… He would be in the World Cup again? Seemed odd to see him there as that is where they had really begun. 

Somehow, she goes though. Not with Ron nor the Weasleys nor Harry even as they went to the Minister’s box. She’d owled tickets out to people from Durmstrang, to Luna and Neville. Some time after the Daily Prophet splashed the mass murder of Ministry Employees at the hands of a magical creature employed by the ministry for weeks at a time.

Petya was no longer the young man she’d met all those years ago. His hair longer, grinning, the scar on his face. Aleksandr and Antonio had changed as well and Cyrus, whom she'd seen at the celebration briefly, was not among them, instead the woman who'd been on Viktor’s arm, Antonio's cousin who'd fought with them in the war. They had all grown up, yet they all called her sister and squeezed her tight just the same.

“Is good to see you,” Petya said. “Saw you in paper, read letters, but different. You have grown.”

She swatted him before she introduced them all to Luna and Neville. They exchanged their niceties before Hermione asked them how they had been since the war. In general, they were moving on with their lives, helping to rebuild Durmstrang and restoring order. 

“Has been difficult, but… Viktor needs to fly after so much trouble.”

Hermione nodded in understanding, going with them towards the front of the box, stepping out onto the balcony, wrapped in Bulgarian colors and cheering for the start of the game.  There is an elderly woman with them that gives Hermione a knowing smile from across the room and says nothing to her. The woman seems to go unnoticed with the exception of Hermione who can feel her presence and ses her. The stadium erupted just as his name was cast across the crowd as he flew by, his grace in the air the same as always, perhaps more so. She only hoped that he would not get his in the face with a bludger again. 

“Viktor tells us you are dating red haired boy,” Petya said eyeing her.

Hermione nodded slowly, “Yes, we went out to dinner… It was boring as usual.”

Petya nodded, “Boring...Date not meant to be boring.”

She looked at him, “I didn’t invite you so you could dig.”

“I not dig, just… try to understand.”

Hermione leaned forward, “Me too.”

Petya looked at her and nodded, “Viktor… still keeps Yule Ball pictures.”

She smiled, “Me too.”

Petya sighed, “Is scary no? Not running for life?”

Hermione chuckled, “Yeah.”

He slung an arm around her shoulder, “You will find answers. Too smart not to.”

“I hope so.”

“How are your parents?” Petya asked. “I surprised you not spend summer… every day possible with them.”

“I... “ Hermione started. “They're fine...in Australia.”

Petya looked at her as she kept her eyes watching Viktor soar through the air, weightless and free on his broom. She hadn’t told anyone about what happened to her family, what she’d felt she had to do… what had been for the best.

She’d felt the wards around her old house being disturbed sometime while Bellatrix tortured her and held on to the feeling, the knowledge that they were safe-- so very safe in Australia. 

“Everything I ever was is gone now…”

“Hermy-own,” Petya started. “Does… Viktor know?”

She shook her head, “No one does…”

“No one asked?”

Hermione shook her head and Petya squeezed, “I am sorry. You could come stay with us? Or Antonio, yes? Muses ask about you often.”

She thought about that for a moment. How would she explain that to the Weasleys? To Harry and Molly specifically. She’d learned a lot time ago that there was no real way to explain anything to Ron that he wouldn’t like… just let him figure it out, burn about it for a while and then come back when he’s had his fit. Harry would understand the need to be around more people that knew some of her secrets, maybe knew a different side of Hermione, maybe knew something that they couldn’t ever fathom… 

Molly wouldn’t understand why the love in the Burrow wasn’t enough to keep whatever gloom Hermione was feeling away. Wouldn’t understand why she would move in with them, wouldn’t understand a lot of things… so set on having her as the third daughter of the Weasley family after Ginny and Fleur

Hermione smirked, “Maybe in the future.”

Petya nodded and reached for two cups of alcohol as the game began and passed her drinks. The constituents lined up watching Viktor soar through the air, seemingly playing more aggressive than usual.

“He is angry,” Aleksandr explained. “Ministry… treat friend very badly.”

“The Ministry?” Hermione asked.

Antonio nodded, “Viktor stood as a character witness for him… Viktor is working to get his sentence revoked before they condemn him, but it is a ticking clock with no known time.”

Hermione swallowed and nodded, “Is this the case that’s been in the papers?”

Antonio nodded, “The new minister says that he is in violation of the international wand ban, and killed his entire team, but Cyrus would never do that.”

“Has he tried Priori Incantartum?”

“Cyrus’s wand would not reveal its spell registry,” Antonio said. “They could not break it, nor destroy it.”

Hermione nodded as the game paused for halftime and the elderly woman came up to her.

“You are Hermione, riight?”

She turned looking at the woman before Petya cheered and moved to hug her.

“Baba Angelov, when did you get here?”

“I have been here, darling Petya,” she said squeezing him back and pinching his cheek. ”You are Hermione Granger, correct?”

She nodded slowly and watched the woman step closer to her and take her hands, meeting her eyes.

_ Thank you,  _ she whispered in her mind.  _ For caring for Viktor. They say he would not have made it. _

For a moment, Hermione could see Viktor fighting at Durmstrang, flying through the air as he defended a group of students, They’d hit his arm, full in the chest that should have killed him, but glanced off, leaving him in pain, his right arm injured but not defeated. His eyes had been so fierce, casting protective and disillusionment over the students and telling them to run. 

_ “ _ I just wanted to meet the woman who my grandson was so infatuated with...With good reason too.”

Petya laughed as Hermione’s eyes widened. 

“You're Viktor’s grandmother? Eleonora Angelov…”

She nodded, “May I have a word with you? Before the game continues?”

“Of course.”

She followed the older woman out of the box, down the corridor and watched the woman cast a quick silencing charm around them.

“My grandson is quite taken with you Miss Granger.”

“Please, just Hermione.”

“There are questions you will have soon, questions you may have now that you need to answer. Do not fear Viktor’s reaction,” she said. “He has his own answers to find for now. When you are ready, I believe you will find the rest rather easily.”

Hermione licked her lips, “I’m not sure if I understand.”

“You struggle with your place in the wizarding of world,” she said. “Without family, without guidance… You have to go find your answers. Go find them. Do not worry for Viktor.”

Hermione swallowed as the woman pinched her cheek, “His is a heart like a dragon, dear. Much like yours.”

She nodded slowly and they turned back to the box to watch the end of the half-time show. They were playing some new song as the Veelas performed on behalf of the Bulgarian team, entrancing the male audience. 

In the end, Viktor catches the snitch, seemingly unattached to his broom in the conventional sense, corkscrewing and free-falling after the snitch, the other team’s seeker just behind him, but not fast enough. 

Hermione hears herself scream and cheer with the rest of the box there to cheer for Viktor as he soared up , the snitch in his hand, holding it high, his eyes alight and looking towards the box as the music began to play. He watched them dance, Petya spinning Hermione around to the sound of the music and swallowed. 

Drifting down and looking at the English team, despaired for losing, the Beater had caught him in the leg, and it was definitely broken, but he hadn’t cared.

“Viktor Crazy Krum has led Bulgaria to victory against the English team! What a game!”

He heard the chanting of his name and looked towards the official team box where his parents were along with a lot of the other player’s family. Then to the Minister’s box where Ron, Harry, and some of the other heroes from the war were cheering. 

Then to Hermione standing beside his grandmother, cheering along with the crowd and for the first time since the beginning of Cyrus’s case he smiled. Circling the field and shooting up for the crowd’s amusement through the Bulgarian flag. His team followed his lead coasting down to the ground to cheer and launch themselves at him. Sending him falling to the ground in pain for his leg, but laughing as they scolded him for his insanity and called over the team’s mediwitch who was less useful than a muggle doctor. 

He held the Snitch in his hand a wry smile and lay back looking at his leg as the mediwitch seemed to try and talk to him rather than heal him. His parents came first to congratulate him. His grandmother brought most of his personal section with her, pinching his cheeks and showering him with affection. 

Hermione lingered just beyond the doorway, trying to gather courage maybe. 

She yelped as Petya pulled her to Viktor’s bedside and the mediwitch kept working to bandage his leg. Viktor looked at her and opened his mouth before she pulled out her wand and tapped his leg twice. It was an odd sensation, but no pain, as his bones snapped back together and healed, the lesion from the bone protruding healed, muscles realigning and his pant leg sewing and cleaning itself. 

Viktor looked at her as the mediwitch gawked at her, flushed and stormed off. 

“Let’s give them a moment,” Elenaora said, guiding them out. Neville nervous with the receipt of Viktor’s autograph. Hermione worried her lips but took a seat at the edge of the cot Viktor sat on as he swung his legs over the side. 

“Thank you,” he said patting his leg. “Our mediwitch is not… the best.”

Hermione smiled, “Be careful, you still have to deal with her.”

He shook his head, “Think I will... Retire soon. Am tired of spotlight…. How are you?”

Hermione let out a sigh and shook her head as he pulled her against him, pressing a kiss to her hair. 

“Is good to see you,” Viktor said. 

“If you’d died, I would have never forgiven you.”

Viktor laughed, “Could not die. Had beautiful woman’s protection… and promise to see again.”

Hermione nodded and looked up at him, “Viktor I…”

“Not yet, mila,” he said, pressing calloused fingers to her lips. “For now… tell me why so sad.”

“I…” she started and looked at him. “I… shouldn’t be sad. My parents are alive, I’ve saved the world… I have a Merlin Order of the First Class and more job offers than I know what to do with…”

“Not important to you…”

“I… made a decision,” Hermione said. “I don’t regret it, but… it hurts.”

Viktor nodded, “Parents?”

Hermione nodded as he pulled her closer, rocking her gently, “I… am sorry, mila. We make hard decision in war… some for the best, some hurt longer, but we make them out of love.”

Hermione nodded, “They were looking for them.”

Viktor looked at her. 

“I placed wards, illusions around the house and they went there. I saw them, felt them while Bellatrix tortured me...She told me they would make me watch them torture them when they found them… It was… the only thing that kept me feigning, kept me conscious...Kept me fighting...That they would  _ never _ find them.”

Viktor nodded, “They would be proud, mila.”

Hermione nodded, “I know.”

The door opened with the Bulgarian coach, telling Viktor that the press address was about to start. He sighed. 

“Must go, but… will see again, yes? Still write?”

She nodded and hugged him tightly before leaving. 

“Hermione,” he said softly and she turned. “I... will wait.”

Hermione swallowed and opened her mouth.

“There is nothing you can say,” Viktor said. “Do not believe any other choice.”

She shut her mouth and shook her head, “Don’t.”

_ Don’t wait for her _ , she was so… broken she didn’t even know where to begin to sort the pieces and put them together. 

“You… Durmstrang strong-- not defeated,” he said, pressing a kiss to her cheek before leaving the room. “Never defeated,  _ mila. _ ”

She watched him go, standing still in the locker room before squaring her shoulders and leaving the room to meet up with Neville and Luna. After a flurry of hugs and teasing from the Durmstrang boys, she found them talking with Harry, Ginny, Ron, and the rest of the Weasleys. 

Ron looked at her as she walked towards them, something in his eyes telling her that this thing they had wasn’t ever lasting, wasn’t going to last.

“Hermione, didn’t think you were serious,” Harry said. “You’re not really a Quidditch fan.”

Hermione shrugged, “I didn’t come for the sport, but the company.”

“You could have been in the Minister’s box with us,” Ron said, narrowing his eyes. 

“I had seating arrangements, promises to meet up and catch up during the game,” Hermione said with a sigh. “Can’t say how much of a relief it was to see them all alive.”

Ron blinked then looked away, seeming to flush, but carefully to take her hand and hide the Bulgarian and English colored pages covered in signatures, but she saw. 

“You finally got his autograph did you?”

Ron rolled his eyes and tugged her along to the portkey they’d take to the Burrow for more partying. 


End file.
